CPUGirl: Origins
by Knight One
Summary: Mara Jacobs was once a normal computer system engineer, now she's a super-powered heroine. This is her story.


**STEEL CANYON\PARAGON CITY\AUGUST 2, 2010**

The explosion of power ripped through the steel canyons created by the city's skyscrapers, rippling and shattering glass as the pulses expanded in a menacing sphere of red. Pushed by the expanding force, a young woman, dressed in an armored suit traced with glowing lines of pulsating blue-green energy, flew backwards, arcing as gravity pushed her to the ground. She impacted with the asphalt of the city street, carving a deep furrow until the increasing friction halted her. She lay there, unmoving, like a ragged doll discarded on her side, sparks from broken signs showering down on her in the summer heat.

The rounded T-shaped visor of the helmet showed cracks and blinked intermittently as the internal heads-up display sputtered and failed. The helmet cracked and the same blue-green energy seemed to seep from the breaches Inside the helmet, a young woman stared through the broken visor glassily, eyes unblinking, her mind and body numb from shock. An alarm klaxon, signaling dangerous breaches in armor integrity and containment cracked and popped through the damaged helmet speaker and slowly, ever so slowly, pulled her out of stupor.

She blinked, and tried to pick herself up, her entire body screaming at her in protest. She twisted, and a sharp, searing pain caused her to fall back to the ground, clutching her armored side. She began coughing violently, each spasm bringing it's own pain and the coppery taste of blood in her mouth. Flecks of red spattered the inside of the visor. _Difficulty breathing plus hemoptysis._ She thought to herself. _Probably from pulmonary trauma, maybe a broken rib piercing a lung. Not good. _She twisted to leverage herself up on hands and knees, the horrific pain in her chest causing her to gasp. _Broken rib seems like a pretty good assumption._

"Command: Diagnostics, level1." She croaked into the microphone embedded in the helmet. She wasn't even sure if the high-level functions of her suit's artificial intelligence were still working, and when she received no audible response she had to assume the worst.. Some of the redundant systems, like the alarm that alerted her to breaches in her suit's energy containment grid, the system she designed to keep the unique energy she radiated from destroying everything within a thirty foot radius from being destroyed. The alarm meant that she was seeping energy from her armor somewhere, but with the suit's primary systems down, she couldn't tell where. She could still move, so the suit's micro-hydraulics and servo systems were still working, for the moment at least. She was in a bad situation, though. If she couldn't get away soon, she'd bleed out internally and die.

A loud thrumming sound made her lift her head up, and what she saw caused her eyes to widen in fear. Another figure, wearing an exact duplicate of her armor, descended, white-black spheres of energy crackling in the other figure's gauntleted hands. It, for even though the armor was designed to fit a woman, the force that inhabited it could not be identified with a gender, nor even as human.

_This is it,_ she thought to herself. _I'm about to die._ She felt the fear, the absolute, paralyzing terror, but with it came a certain calm acceptance. She did not want to die, but there was nothing she could do to stop it. The other armored figure raised both hands, and a high-pitched whine shrilled through the air as the doppelganger increased the weapons built into its gauntlets to full power. The young woman, the once-super-powered-heroine, bowed her head in defeat. At this range, even if her armor was in top condition, she would never be able to withstand this kind of firepower.

_Only one year, and it's already over._

_I've failed..._

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**AUTHOR'S NOTES: **So, here I am. Back again with something new, perhaps even a "brand new cut". No parachute pants, however. I'm not that cool. This story is part of several based around characters that I've created in both City of Heroes and Champions Online, so we'll be seeing crossovers quite a bit around here. I'm gonna be keeping each chapter short, that way they'll be easier for me to write and post here, but there will be many chapters and a few extra characters.

_Pursue all hope, ye who enter here._


End file.
